Sometimes I’ll make a totally old school remark that John just doesn’t get. This can usually be explained by the fact that he grew up in Iowa, and I was born and raised in Surrey and that some things are purely Canadian or even West Coast. For example, he has no idea who Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod are.
As I was just finishing up my previous post I took a gander at Facebook and noticed one of my contacts just left the group “I do the ‘over the head’ clapping motion every time I talk about Kidstreet“. Holy Crap! I thought I was like the only person that remembered that show [wiki]. Whenever I get a little too excited (yes, that does happen sometimes) I’ll go “Kidstreet Clap!” and reach my hands above my head to applaud. After this my husband usually rolls his eyes and looks at me all crazy-like even though I really don’t complain when he does the “High Five!…. Self High Five!” bit.
The defining glory of the Kidstreet Clap is basically that the children on the show were crammed into tiny little race cars with no room to place their arms at their sides – hence forcing the overhead clap.
I think I’m going to leave the Facebook group as quickly as I joined but actually seeing old photos and proving to John that the show did in fact exist, makes it all worthwhile.
After camping last weekend I kinda thought that we would be taking it easy this week but that’s definitely not the case. On Friday afternoon I went out for a drink with work people – well more like the boss packed us all up early and lead us over to the Irish Heather for beer to celebrate someone’s last day with the company. The night being young once those events wrapped up, my co-worker and I met up with John for more beer, which eventually lead us over to TC Lions Pub in Coal Harbour. Out on the patio for oooh about 4 hours we managed (barely) to polish off one of their 4 litre jugs of beer. It was a warm, clear evening so aside from being filled with pale ale we all managed to stumble home okay.
Saturday morning John went to work for CFOX again and I had the house to myself (this is a rare occasion for us Bollwitts, really). I decided to go get my hair done at our favourite little place on Denman.
About a year ago John was looking for somewhere to get a cheap haircut and stumbled upon Envy. Since then we’ve become loyal, regular customers and really enjoy the relationship that we have with the owner and head stylist, Minoo. Although I certainly don’t go as often as I should, she’s so talented and gives the best haircuts – for men and women, no matter what you put in front of her. My hair was just getting WAY too long and shapeless, so she gave me some advice, a fantastic colour job and the awesome haircut followed. I’m SO happy with it I said I was going to blog about the place – so here it is. It’s hard to find a stylist that not only has reasonable prices and knows what to do with your hair, but the atmosphere of the studio is warm and lacks the attitudes of anywhere else in the downtown core.
Quick info about Envy Hair Studio & Esthetics: Located at 730 Denman [Google Map], open 7 days a week from 10:00am to 7:00pm and Sunday from 12:00 to 5:00pm. Call ahead and make an appointment (604-602-9880). They do hair (cut from $17, colour, highlights, extensions, updo’s etc.), Massages, Nail Care (e.g. manicures $20), and waxing (eyebrows $10, bikini $18 and Brazilians $35) and much much more. Their website isn’t up yet but it will be www.envyhairstudio.com.
Last night we headed over to Corinna and Adam’s as it was her birthday last Thursday and the festivities were ongoing. Drinks were aplenty and it seemed like she was having a total blast, which was really great to see. By the way, if you’ve ever ‘adopted’ a sock monkey from them, be sure to join their “Sock Monkey Army” facebook group and post pics.
Our weekend has ended here, back at home after a train ride in from Surrey. Now I better not write about my dad being that it’s Father’s Day since my Mom is still a little miffed that here wasn’t a Mother’s Day dedication to her. Parents these days eh?
More busy-ness to come this week but hopefully we’re going to meet up with some folks from England (fans of the podcast) who are in town visiting. Which reminds me, I really need to keep up to speed on my posts since if it weren’t for blogging we wouldn’t have gone camping last weekend or had any plans last night.
When I was little we would drive through New Westminster every Sunday and pass the big, intimidating and scary-looking Penitentiary. Its high walls up on the hill above Columbia street over looking the Fraser were dark grey and seemed to span for miles.
In 1878, the Government of Canada opened the British Columbia Penitentiary, the first federal penitentiary west of Manitoba. “BC Pen” or simply “the Pen” as it was known… It housed maximum security prisoners for the next 102 years, closing in 1980. [wiki]
I can’t remember the year the walls were torn down but all that is left today are the main gates and the centre building with a memorable blue roof.
The original centre block (reputedly haunted) of the Pen still stands and has been revamped into condominiums and a fancy restaurant, while the rest of the Pen’s grounds have been filled with newly-built townhouses and condominiums. [wiki]
I thought about The Pen recently when I visited with someone who lived in the condos on the hill, right atop the old grounds. Actually, when I got out of the car I snapped a picture as I had never been that close to the structure before. My mother has been to the Cafe many times and says it’s really lovely and the serving staff all wear little striped shirts to look like jailbirds.
I also remember that The Keg Restaurants used to have an item on the menu called the “Billy Miner Pie”, maybe they still do, but my dad told me that Bill Miner was a prisoner who escaped from the B.C. Penitentiary and was responsible for the first train robbery in Canadian history.
The views from the hillside where gold rush convicts roamed are beautiful and if you are in the vicinity, can maneuver your way around all the cul-de-sacs and get over the heebie jeebies the entire place emits, then you should definitely try out The Pen Cafe and experience a bit of B.C. history up close.
On a side note, Sapperton Days are this weekend, another area of New West that is rich in history. John and I attended last year and that’s where I first met Fin *sigh*. More details about the weekend-long neighbourhood festival are available at ShopSapperton.com.
My boss sent me an IM on Skype the other day talking about how fun it would be to work with the following people – and I wholeheartedly have to agree. I mean my office is pretty fun, very relaxed, but this is just hilarious.
So thinking about what my office could do, if we had maybe 20 more people and were so bold, John suggested the Kaiser Chiefs – Ruby [Audihertz]. This would be particularly fun since our realtime payment management suite is built using Ruby on Rails. Somehow though, I find it highly unlikely that my office would put together something like this, now Bryght on the other hand, I can see. That, and I think we all might get a kick of out “karaoke Boris”.
Speaking of offices and work, I’ve been at my new job just over a month now and I think it’s going pretty well. I’m not excruciatingly bored and they’re not tired of me yet so that’s a good sign. I’ve been tinkering so much with WordPress that I’m going to start applying some of my new tricks to Miss604.com and see where that gets me. I’ve had this current theme for almost a year and I might just spruce it up a little. I really enjoy the minimalist look and feel and I think I can probably make this here site a little more fancy by way of a couple plugins. It’s really great that John is expanding his knowledge, in the realm of WP and Drupal, as well.
Although my blogging has slowed down a little recently I think it’s the “Facebook Syndrome” as Corinna [GusGreeper.com] pointed out to us the other day. Ever since Facebook came on the scene traffic’s been a little slow in blog-ville. I think the two can play together very nicely and I haven’t even begun to lose faith. All of these tools are just that, tools to help grow social networks and it’s all about cross-promotion. Now, it’s back to the land of WordPress for me and I must admit, I’m growing more and more envious of Dave’s shirt (above) with every passing day.
